In Memoriam David Armstrong

In Memoriam David Armstrong

(May 2014)

Friendship’s pointless

if it’s analysed.

It flows, or ought to,

seamlessly, from day

to day.

When, however, day

closes down

under time’s dictates,

you cannot help but

look back on it;

then words are constrained

that consider it because

they deal, and must,

with both the living and the dead.

On one hand, the unearned

aggrandisement of grief,

on the other, the challenge of

a tribute feared to be inadequate

no matter what is said.

David, unlike the rest of us,

didn’t choose his avocation,

or stumble on it at

Someone else’s urging.

It was interchangeable with

his nature, inseparable from

his temperament. The problems

of philosophy, let’s say of

universals, were intellectual

abstractions, certainly, but also of

the commonplace air he breathed;

Perhaps this is typical of

greatness in a thinker,

as is the apparent naiveté

that accompanies devotion,

some construe as callousness.

A mind unusual: one prepared

to consider for discussion

any intelligent proposition;

we do that mind

paltry reverence by

referring, as if surprised,

to its un-narrowness.

But it’s worth comment

that imaginative literature,

Shakespeare and poetry,

were for David no also-rans

to theoretical disquisition,

as with many of his co-scholars,

but essential to his inner being.

I begin now

to be aware of

the space

in my own life

left by his going;

ecce homo: whose temperament

fitted ideally the power of

his intellect,

A man, indeed, entitled,

if anyone is,

to look back at achievement,

without regret.

Left in his debt,

pleased to be his friend,

and grateful too,

now we must make do

with remembering him.

But the gratitude

goes on.

Alwyn Karpin